Morris v. Legends Fieldhouse Bar & Grill, LLC

• Decision Date: 30 April 2021
• Docket Number: No. 19-1349,19-1349
• Citation: 958 N.W.2d 817
• Parties: Jennifer MORRIS, Individually and as Administrator of the Estate of Daulton Holly, and Jason Allan Holly, Appellants, v. LEGENDS FIELDHOUSE BAR AND GRILL, LLC ; Pretty Women, Inc. d/b/a The Beach Girls, J.P. Parking, Inc.; James E. Petry; ABC Corp., a fictitious corporation; and Ronald Paul Hauser, Appellees.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

958 N.W.2d 817

Jennifer MORRIS, Individually and as Administrator of the Estate of Daulton Holly, and Jason Allan Holly, Appellants,

v.LEGENDS FIELDHOUSE BAR AND GRILL, LLC ; Pretty Women, Inc. d/b/a The Beach Girls, J.P. Parking, Inc.; James E. Petry; ABC Corp., a fictitious corporation; and Ronald Paul Hauser, Appellees.

No. 19-1349

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Submitted January 21, 2021

Filed April 30, 2021

Amended May 5, 2021

Christopher D. Stombaugh (argued) and Tiffany R. Wunderlin of DiCello Levitt & Gutzler LLC, Platteville, Wisconsin, and R. Craig Oppel of Allbee & Barclay, P.C., Muscatine, for appellants.

Adam D. Zenor (argued) of Zenor Kuehner, P.L.C., Des Moines, and Sean M. Corpstein of Grefe & Sidney, P.L.C., Des Moines, for appellees.

Waterman, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which Christensen, C.J., and Mansfield, McDonald, Oxley, and McDermott, JJ., joined. Appel, J., filed a dissenting opinion.

WATERMAN, Justice.

The "law of duty [is] alive and well." McCormick v. Nikkel & Assocs., Inc. , 819 N.W.2d 368, 371 (Iowa 2012). In this appeal, we must decide whether the district court correctly granted a "no-duty" summary judgment dismissing a wrongful-death-negligence action against a business. The defendant strip club's security guard had ejected an intoxicated patron outside and offered him a cab ride. The patron refused the cab offer and left on foot. Over thirty minutes later and nearly a half mile away, he was struck and killed by a drunk driver. The decedent's parents and his estate brought this common law negligence action against the strip club and the drunk driver and a dramshop claim against a bar that had served the driver. The district court granted the strip club's motion for summary judgment, ruling that the club owed no continuing duty to the patron after he walked away from its premises. The plaintiffs appealed, and we transferred the case to the court of appeals, which reversed the summary judgment, concluding the district court erred by considering foreseeability in its duty analysis. We granted the defendant's application for further review.

On our review, we hold that the defendants owed no continuing legal duty to the intoxicated patron ejected from inside the business after he refused the offer of a cab ride and chose to walk away. The patron was not ordered to leave the parking lot and could have waited there for another ride on that summer evening. For the reasons explained below, we vacate the decision of the court of appeals and affirm the district court's summary judgment.

I. Background Facts and Proceedings.

The following facts in the record are undisputed or viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs. On the evening of August 22, 2015, Daulton Holly, age 22, and his friend Jordan Wills had been drinking since 5 p.m. Holly lived in Tennessee and was in the Des Moines area for work and staying at a hotel. The men took a cab to Beach Girls, a strip club approximately twelve minutes away from their hotel by car. The club was located in a remote, rural area of West Des Moines. Beach Girls allows patrons to bring their own beer to drink inside, and Holly and Wills bought their beer at a convenience store en route. Surveillance video shows them arriving at Beach Girls at 11:37 p.m.

Jeremiah Kraemer was working there as a security guard. He saw Holly and Wills arrive together by cab. Later that night, Kraemer observed Holly repeatedly drop his wallet, knock drinks off a table, and attempt to enter the female dancer's dressing room. Kraemer concluded Holly was intoxicated and escorted him outside. Kraemer told Holly, "Sorry, bud. You've had too much to drink. I can't let you go back inside the club. You can't be drunk in the club. You're just having issues right now. I can't let you go back in." Wills joined them outside and Kraemer told him:

"Here's the deal. He's intox"-- "he's had a little too much. He just needs to go. You need to get him a cab. I don't know what you want to do, but he can't go back inside. You guys need to figure something out here."

Kraemer later testified that customers "consume alcohol, so it's actually my responsibility to make sure people get home safe, if possible. But also, I can't detain people for no good reason, so if they want to leave, they can leave." While Kraemer said they always offer a cab, it is not his job to call a cab for a customer. Regardless, Kraemer offered a cab to Holly a couple times, which Holly refused. Neither Kraemer nor any other employee ordered Holly to leave the parking lot.

Wills didn't want to leave and argued with Holly. Holly started walking away, and Kraemer told Wills: "You need to try to get him a cab. It's not safe for him to be walking out around here with dark clothes on." Holly flipped off Wills as he walked away; Wills returned inside saying, "Well, he'll regret it tomorrow." Surveillance video shows Holly walking away from Beach Girls at 1:29 a.m. Kraemer testified that Holly was walking in a straight line when he departed down the club's long driveway that connects with Raccoon River Drive.

At 2:11 a.m., a 911 caller reported a body lying face down on the pavement at the 6400 block of Raccoon River Drive, approximately half a mile from Beach Girls. Police identified the body as Holly. An autopsy showed that at the time of his death, Holly had marijuana metabolites in his blood stream and a blood alcohol concentration of 0.261. Police determined that Ronald Hauser struck and killed Holly with his vehicle. Hauser had been at Legends Fieldhouse Bar and Grill, where he drank between five and six Exile beers, and is shown on video arriving at Beach Girls at 2:07 a.m. Hauser's vehicle had no front-end damage and the DNA and trace evidence were found only on the underside. Based on the physical evidence, Amanda Kilgore, a criminalist at the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, concluded that Holly was lying in the road when he was run over.

Hauser pled guilty to Operating While Intoxicated (OWI) and Hit and Run—Serious Injury. Jennifer Morris, Daulton Holly's mother, filed this civil action as administrator of his estate, alleging dram claims against Legends, negligent driving claims against Hauser, and negligence claims against Beach Girls.¹ The petition alleged,

[t]he negligent acts of the Beach Girls ... employees, staff, agents, and/or officers in ejecting Daulton Holly from its premises when he was clearly too intoxicated to drive or otherwise safely make it back to his hotel without assistance was a direct and proximate cause of the damages sustained by the decedent, Daulton Holly.

Beach Girls denied the allegations and moved for summary judgment, contending that the negligence and premises liability claims "fail[ ] as a matter of law as to the landowner because the injury to ... Daulton Holly did not occur on the premises or by an instrument that came from the premises."

The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Beach Girls, concluding that although the business owed patrons a duty of reasonable care while on its property, "when Holly voluntarily left the premises, that duty ceased." The district court reasoned that Holly's fatality "occurred nearly half a mile" from Beach Girls, "approximately 30–40 minutes after" he chose to walk away and that to impose liability under such circumstances

would put future businesses ... in the untenable position of making judgment calls on each individual patron and deciding whether ... they could lawfully restrain a customer from leaving[ or] force them into a cab ... [when] doing so could theoretically subject business owners to civil or even criminal liability for false imprisonment.

The estate appealed, and we transferred the case to the court of appeals, which reversed the summary judgment, holding that the district court erred in including foreseeability in its duty analysis. We granted the Beach Girls’ application for further review.

II. Standard of Review.

"We review a trial court's grant of summary judgment for correction of errors at law." Van Fossen v. MidAm. Energy Co. , 777 N.W.2d 689, 692 (Iowa 2009). "On motion for summary judgment, the court must: (1) view the facts in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, and (2) consider on behalf of the nonmoving party every legitimate inference reasonably deduced from the record." Id. "Summary judgment is appropriate if ‘there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and ... the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.’ " Id. at 693 (alteration in original) (quoting Iowa R. Civ. P. 1.981(3) ).

"While summary adjudication is rarely appropriate in negligence cases, the determination of whether a duty is owed under particular circumstances is a matter of law for the court's determination." Hoyt v. Gutterz Bowl & Lounge, L.L.C. , 829 N.W.2d 772, 775 (Iowa 2013).

III. Analysis.

We must decide whether Beach Girls was entitled to summary judgment on grounds that its duty to Holly ended when he walked away from the premises after he was ejected from inside for intoxication and refused its offer of a cab ride. The parties agree that the business owed its patrons a duty of reasonable care for their safety while on its property. Did that duty of care end at its property line? What duty is owed after a business ejects a patron for intoxication? Is the business liable for an accident occurring over thirty minutes later nearly half a mile away?

We begin our duty analysis with general principles of negligence law. "An actionable negligence claim requires ‘the existence of a duty to conform to a standard of conduct to protect others ....’ " McCormick , 819 N.W.2d at 371 (quoting Thompson v. Kaczinski , 774 N.W.2d 829, 834 (Iowa 2009) ). "Historically, the duty determination focused on three factors: the relationship between the parties, the foreseeability of harm, and public policy." Id.

"In Thompson [v. Kaczinski ], we said that foreseeability should not enter into the duty calculus but should...